Talking to the Memorial of a Hero
by TYRider
Summary: Third and possibly final instalment in my "Heroes" series. Can be read as a stand-alone oneshot or as the sequel to "Of Home and Heroes" and "He Lived and Died a Hero." Post Fall. Spoilers. Summary: Sherlock finds himself alone in the cemetery talking to to John's tombstone and telling it all the things he wishes he'd said to John's face. Not Slash. Feels and angst.


**A/N: And here's the final installment of the ****_Heroes _****series. This can be read as a stand alone or as a sequel to "Of Home and Heroes" and "He Lived and Died a Hero." This series has been my baby of sorts and I'm quite proud of this piece. Please read and review! (There may be one last loosely related oneshot after this.)  
Disclaimer: In my dreams. No profit being made. etc.**

Sherlock sat up and slowly unfolded his lanky and protesting limbs. He groaned. Another night spent outdoors and on hard ground wasn't exactly restful or relaxing. He attempted to stretch the stiffness from his extremities, but with only limited results. Turning his deductive powers inward on himself he concluded that practically seventy-two straight hours spent prostrate over a dead man's grave resulted in sore muscles, stiffness, fatigue, dehydration, and did nothing to help with his depression. He also decided he didn't particularly care. He was grieving. _Isn't this what people do? _He Thought. Wasn't this how grieving worked?Didn't the bereaved normally respond by giving in to sentiment and irrational, self-destructive behaviors? He sniffed. It didn't really matter what average people did. This was Sherlock Holmes, the self-proclaimed sociopath without a heart, who discovered too late that he did in fact have a heart. That heart died and now he was… _grieving_ and this was just how it was.

He stiffened and let out a feral growl the first time he watched a conspicuously inconspicuous black luxury car roll by slowly on the main road. _Mycroft._ By the third drive by he couldn't be bothered enough to even snarl. It didn't matter. He didn't care. Nothing mattered. He did manage to acknowledge a small sense of relief that there weren't any CTTV cameras posted nearby. At least he wouldn't have to suffer under that cold, electronic gaze.

_Damn it! Damn these emotions—this blasted sentiment. _Sherlock thought, running shaky fingers through his tangled curls. It was too much. Too much _feeling _after years of being icy-cold and numb. Now his mind wasn't the only thing ripping itself to shreds, but his heart also. And he knew—he _knew_—that the heart in his chest wasn't the center of emotion—of course not—but then why did his chest physically ache? He didn't know and John wasn't here for him to ask. _Without answers._ Just another thing to add to the growing list of Withouts. If things kept going on this way Sherlock figured it wouldn't be long before he could add _without sanity_ and _without reason_ to the list.

_Think. Thinkthinkthinkthink! _He demanded, but his mind would not comply. He ran to his Mind Palace only to find the door barred and locked, a cold front unwilling to let in his shaken psyche.

He'd tried everything over the last weeks. He'd attempted to move on, returning to Baker Street to find it largely the same, minus John's things, which Harry had either taken for sentimental reasons or thrown out. He'd tried taking cases, but they weren't interesting to him anymore. Despite the brave face the world put on, Sherlock had decided, it couldn't truly move on without John. So, Sherlock stopped trying to push on and gave up to simply sit back and wait until the world slowed to a stop. He waited, but it didn't wind down. It crawled—limped, ironically enough—pathetically on without the doctor-soldier-blogger-friend-_hero_. Now, he did nothing, but sit and wait and mourn and experience all these bloody feelings he'd been repressing for a reason and occasionally he talked to John—John's tombstone rather.

On the first day and most of the first night spent in the cemetery Sherlock had given the tombstone his list of Withouts. Giving it all of the reasons why the earth should stop spinning and flying round the sun (if John was right about the solar system) and why all of the universe should have reached the bottom of its free fall through nothingness. No one's supposed to go round and round the garden once the teddy bear is dead.

The next day involved a lot of sulking and inwardly-turned deducting. Sherlock spent most of day two curled up in John's wing of his Mind Palace, reliving his life with John as his friend. Then he'd told the cold stone about The Fall and how he'd survived. The rock seemed unimpressed and Sherlock really couldn't blame it. He had failed. Maybe not in the fall itself or in the dismantling of Moriarty's web, but he had failed in the most import part—keeping John safe.

The third day was spent in silence, nearly as stony as the memorial he refused to face. Sherlock was in denial, his mask of sociopathic indifference snapped firmly back into place. He refused to acknowledge the fact that emotions—evil things that he had thought dead and buried—had returned unbidden to his chest. He sat unseeing through the entire day focusing on simply not thinking—a truly foreign exercise. If he didn't think he couldn't think about feeling and since he couldn't keep himself from feeling—he'd tried—the next best thing, which was to ignore it. It was almost the same as not feeling… for a little while at least.

Sometime during the last night something inside had broken as an inner thought broke through the walls of his mind murmuring something about "a bit not good." And "this is unhealthy, Sherlock, even for you." In a voice that sounded eerily like John's. Sherlock felt like he was being wracked by the aftershocks of an earthquake. From a window of his Mind Palace Sherlock had ventured to gaze across the sea of his psyche and he only had time to cringe at what he saw—the characteristic drawback of the waves of his mind like the drawback before a tsunami hit land. Then they hit. One emotion billowing in, crashing over him, after another—sadness, fear, regret, loss, anger. They all rolled in until his mind was roiling.

And now, here he was sitting in the cemetery, locked out of his own Mind Palace, practically dripping with emotion. His mask cracked and shattered and completely gone. Today was the first day in a long time that Sherlock wore no mask. Today Sherlock didn't bury his heart or turn a stony face and sharp-tongued persona to the world. Today Sherlock had emotions—mainly sad ones, but still… Today he bared his soul to a rock, to a cold memorial, the last thing left of his only friend.

He started talking.

"I never could understand why you had to be so bloody selfless." He begins, bitter, throwing a glare over his shoulder at the tombstone behind him. He softens a little and bites back a half-sob-half-laugh. "I guess it's just part of what makes you John." He finishes, slipping into present tense.

The rock has no response.

"I never did tell you properly, but you were brilliant in your own way. Watching Captain John Watson the soldier ordering people about, kicking some misguided minion's arse, threatening Donovan or Anderson or shooting the enemy was always thrilling. Seeing Doctor Watson was equally amazing, you really are a skilled surgeon and doctor."

Sherlock imagines that the rock is pleased with his admission.

He sighed. Amazing. Simply amazing how natural it felt to talk to this slab of marble. He didn't even catch himself slipping in and out of present tense.

Sherlock just sat with the stone for a while, watching the sun rise and banish the fog. He told the stone lots of things. Starting with latest Withouts he'd been adding to his list then he told the rock all the things he'd wished he'd told John before his fall.

"You aren't just my only friend, you're my best friend." He managed between shaky breaths, it was one of the most honest things he'd ever said.

"I never did completely deduce you, you know. I kept learning more about you that I didn't expect. Beginning with the fact that you were a crack shot, but I found that bit out rather quickly though, didn't I?" He half-laughed-half-sobbed again. "I didn't observe that you had an unhappy childhood for a long time—you kept most of your past pretty well hidden, even from me. And then I found out you were an expert rock climber—_that_ came in handy. Oh and you have no idea how shocked I was the first time I heard you sing! You and your blasted golden voice. Sorry for bursting into the shower like that, by the way. And heaven help me, I just know there's so much else about you that I missed out on learning." Sherlock said first smiling at the memories and then frowning in the frustration of a puzzle that would forever go unsolved.

"Thank you for saving me—especially from myself, the cabbie and the Golem." Sherlock nestled against the stone.

Time ticked slowly by and Sherlock continued his one way conversation with the rock that seemed his only comfort left in this world, his final tie to John Watson.

"John, I never did tell you that you weren't completely ordinary. You weren't. You weren't much of an idiot either. You were rather brilliant in your own way actually."

The wind rustled through the trees and clouds reclaimed the blue sky turning it back to its characteristic gray. Every once in a while a black car passed by, but had Sherlock stopped caring. He was talking to John and nothing else mattered. The world could crash and burn—_would _crash and burn—now that there was no John.

"You know," he started, voice hushed and broken, so uncharacteristic of himself. "I was there… that day." He gestured to a place beyond some trees and bushes off to his left. "I was right over there." A tear ran down his cheek. "Those things you said…" he trailed off. "And I was going to. I was coming back. I had one 'miracle' left just for you. Would you do it for me now? Would you just stop this? Stop. Being. Dead." This time he couldn't hold back the sob.

Sherlock closed his eyes and slumped against John's tombstone. Silenced reigned in the cemetery, solemn and brooding. Even the birds took on a reverent hush and the wind slacked off until nothing was stirring except for the rise and fall of the chest of the tall man sprawled over the empty grave of his friend.

"Heaven help you if your name is Gregory Lestrade or Mycroft Holmes." Sherlock announced bitingly at the sound of unsure footsteps approaching. If he hadn't shut down the deductive part of his brain hours ago he would recognized the step, as it was he did manage to realize the coming person was familiar if not welcome.

"You know, you really should eat something."

_Yes. I can now add Without Sanity to the list because that sounded so much like him that I've lost it. After all these years teetering on the brink I have finally fallen into the realm of illogical, irrational insanity._ Sherlock didn't even bother to open his eyes.

"Sherlock." This time the voice was closer and softer, quiet and sad and happy and undeniably _John._

Blue-gray eyes snapped open and found themselves staring at the figure that matched the voice. It too was very _John._

"You are either a remarkably well-formed apparition of my now-derailed mind's creation or you are John." Sherlock's eyes narrowed. Sure he had memorized every visible inch of John during their time as friends and flatmates, but would his mind make such alterations to John as he saw now. He scrutinized this 'John', puzzled by the new lines he found in his face, the obvious weight loss, the pallor of recently overcome sickness, the additional muscles hidden beneath a classically-John jumper. His mind whirred into full gear. Data gathered, deductions made, conclusion drawn. There was only one logical explanation:

"You're supposed to be dead, but you're not?"

John simply laughed and oh how good it was to hear. "That's the pot calling the kettle black isn't, Sherlock?"

Sherlock pulled a face. Cliche idioms had never really been his area.

"You're not the only one who had people to protect and work to do. You're not the only one capable of one last miracle for a friend." John smiled as he spoke, walking over to Sherlock and reaching out a hand to pull the detective to his feel.

John's hand was warm and solid and _real. _They stood there for a moment, each one looking the other over and then John lunged forward and for a second Sherlock thought he was going to hit him—which he thought he deserved, but it still wouldn't be pleasant—but John didn't take a swing at his face, instead Sherlock found himself wrapped in a bear hug and and even more shockingly he found himself hugging back. They pulled away.

Sherlock smiled because John was somehow inexplicably alive and everything would be okay.

"Hungry?" John asks, still smiling.

"Starving!" Sherlock replies honestly.

Together they head off in the general direction of Angelo's, shoulder to shoulder each one just enjoying the other's presence, glad to be alive and even more glad that the other is alive also.

"So that's why it didn't end yet." Sherlock mutters to himself, having finally found the answer to one of his most pressing thoughts from the cemetery.

"What?" John asks, confused.

_You're still alive and that is why the world didn't grind to a halt. Should have known._ Sherlock thinks, but all he says is, "Nothing." And smiles again, adding unexpectedly, "I missed you, John."

"I missed you too, Sherlock."

They continued on in companionable silence until Sherlock sudden stopped and groaned.

"What?" John asked, puzzled.

"You heard all of that didn't you?" Sherlock pulled a face.

"All of what?" John asked innocently.

Sherlock's eyes narrowed, scrutinizing John's face. "Good."

"Sorry, what?"

"Nothing." Sherlock waved a hand dismissively and started walking again.

"Okay then." John said, jogging slowly to catch up with his friend.

More quiet walking.

"John?"

"Yes, Sherlock?"

"You know that thing I said a while back… that thing about heroes… I was wrong." Sherlock stuttered out.

"I know. I always have known you were a hero, Sherlock." John smiled.

"No. No, I wasn't wrong about that bit. I'm not a hero, not really."

"Let's just agree to disagree on that." John said.

Sherlock found himself blushing at the unearned praise. "But I was wrong about one thing."

"Hmm?"

"There are heroes, John."

"Yes, I suppose there are."

"And you're one of them."


End file.
